Eric Hobsbawm | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/eric-hobsbawm
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Tony Benn, 1980 interview: 'Our loss to Thatcher was a surrender rather than a defeat'http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/16/tony-benn-1980-interview-loss-thatcher-surrender-defeat-labour
Tony Benn, who died last week, was in his political prime when he was interviewed by Eric Hobsbawm on the state of the nation under Thatcher… and sounded a heartfelt rallying cry to rescue his beloved Labour party<p><a href="http://www.martinjacques.com/biography/" title="">Martin Jacques</a>, the former editor of <em>Marxism Today.</em> writes: In October 1980 <em>Marxism Today</em> carried what was to become a famous interview with Tony Benn by leading historian Eric Hobsbawm. Benn was at the peak of his power in the Labour party and Hobsbawm had written an influential <a href="http://socialistunity.com/was-hobsbawm-right-all-along/" title="">article</a> on the state of the left entitled &quot;The Forward March of Labour Halted?&quot;. The interview, published on the eve of the Labour conference, attracted enormous interest and was widely cited. Here is an edited extract.</p><p><strong>Eric Hobsbawm </strong>Well, first, it's a great pleasure, of course, to have you here. I would just like to say that I don't see this meeting of ours either as a confrontation or as an equal dialogue. I see my function rather as that of drawing you out, possibly pinning you down, chiefly because your reactions to the questions we are about to discuss are of considerable public interest, in view of your position in politics.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/16/tony-benn-1980-interview-loss-thatcher-surrender-defeat-labour">Continue reading...</a>Tony BennLabourPoliticsHarold WilsonMargaret ThatcherTrade unionsSun, 16 Mar 2014 00:04:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/16/tony-benn-1980-interview-loss-thatcher-surrender-defeat-labourPaul Revere/Rex FeaturesTony Benn pictured in London, 1980.
Photograph: Paul Revere/Rex FeaturesPaul Revere/Rex FeaturesTony Benn pictured in London, 1980.
Photograph: Paul Revere/Rex FeaturesInterview by Eric Hobsbawm2014-03-16T00:04:00ZThe myth of the cowboyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/20/myth-of-the-cowboy
How did the lone cowboy hero become such a potent figure in American culture? In an extract from his final book Fractured Times, the late Eric Hobsbawm follows a trail from cheap novels and B-westerns to Ronald Reagan<p>Today, populations of wild horse-riders and herdsmen exist in a large number of regions all round the world. Some of them are strictly analogous to cowboys, such as gauchos on the plains of the southern cone of Latin America; the <em>llaneros</em> on the plains of Colombia and Venezuela; possibly the <em>vaqueiros</em> of the Brazilian north-east; certainly the Mexican vaqueros from whom indeed, as everyone knows, both the costume of the modern cowboy myth and most of the vocabulary of the cowboy's trade are directly derived: mustang, lasso, lariat, sombrero, chaps (<em>chaparro</em>), a cinch, bronco. There are similar populations in Europe, such as the <em>csikos</em> on the Hungarian plain, or <em>puszta</em>, the Andalusian horsemen in the cattle-raising zone whose flamboyant behaviour probably gave the earliest meaning of the word &quot;flamenco&quot;, and the various Cossack communities of the south Russian and Ukrainian plains.</p><p>In the 16th century there were the exact equivalents of <a href="http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/c/ch045.html" title="the Chisholm trail">the Chisholm trail</a> leading from the Hungarian plains to the market cities of Augsburg, Nuremberg or Venice. And I do not have to tell you about the great Australian outback, which is essentially ranching country, though for sheep more than cattle.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/20/myth-of-the-cowboy">Continue reading...</a>BooksUS televisionWesternsFilmUS politicsJohn WayneUS newsCultureWed, 20 Mar 2013 18:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/20/myth-of-the-cowboyAPThe strong, silent type ... John Wayne in The Searchers. Photograph: AP Photo/Warner BrosMichael Evans/ Michael Evans/ZUMA Press/CorbisChannelling the cowboy myth ... President Ronald Reagan. Photograph: Michael Evans/Zuma Press/CorbisAbc Photo Archives/ABC via Getty ImagesClayton Moore, star of The Lone Ranger – once popular TV westerns became children's television. Photograph: ABC via Getty ImagesDomestic Horse/Konrad Wothe / Minden PicturesThe lone cowboy hero is far removed from the reality of the west. Photograph: Konrad Wothe/Minden PicturesDomestic Horse/Konrad Wothe / Minden PicturesThe lone cowboy hero is far removed from the reality of the west. Photograph: Konrad Wothe/Minden PicturesEric Hobsbawm2013-03-20T18:00:00ZHobsbawm's historyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm-history-book-extracts
The work of the renowned Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm ranged across revolutions and the centuries. Here are extracts from his major works on communism, war and jazz<p>On 28 June 1992 President Mitterrand of France made a sudden, unannounced and unexpected appearance in Sarajevo, already the centre of a Balkan war that was to cost many thousands of lives during the remainder of the year. His object was to remind world opinion of the seriousness of the Bosnian crisis. Indeed, the presence of a distinguished, elderly and visibly frail statesman under small-arms and artillery fire was much remarked on and admired. However, one aspect of M Mitterrand's visit passed virtually without comment, even though it was plainly central to it: the date. Why has the president of France chosen to go to Sarajevo on that particular day? Because 28 June was the anniversary of the assassination, in Sarajevo, in 1914, of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, which led, within a matter of weeks, to the outbreak of the first world war. For any educated European of Mitterrand's age, the connection between date, place and the reminder of a historic catastrophe precipitated by political error and miscalculation leaped to the eye. How better to dramatise the potential implications of the Bosnian crisis than by choosing so symbolic a date? But hardly anyone caught the allusion, except a few professional historians and very senior citizens. The historical memory was no longer alive.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm-history-book-extracts">Continue reading...</a>Eric HobsbawmHistoryUK newsBooksJazzMusicMon, 01 Oct 2012 19:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm-history-book-extractsUnderwood & Underwood/CORBISDuke Ellington: Hobsbawm, a jazz lover, recalls going to see his band when they came to Britain. Photograph: Underwood & Underwood/CORBISWarimage'It is the business of historians to remember what others forget' … The Somme, 1916Warimage'It is the business of historians to remember what others forget' … The Somme, 1916Eric Hobsbawm2012-10-01T19:00:00ZDorothy Wedderburn obituaryhttp://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/sep/21/dorothy-wedderburn
Sociologist who studied how technology affects work<p>Dorothy Wedderburn, who has died aged 87, was a social scientist with interests that came to&nbsp;centre on industrial sociology. She was also a socialist, university principal, enemy of all self-advertisement and an untypical member of the community of &quot;the great and the good&quot;.</p><p>Born in Walthamstow, north-east London, she was the youngest child of&nbsp;Frederick Barnard, a class-conscious trade unionist carpenter and joiner, and his wife, Ethel, who had left school at 13 to earn her living in service. Both were the children of blacksmiths. Even in relatively meritocratic Britain, few 20th-century academics and administrators of distinction started life in such a working-class family. For both Dorothy and her brother George, an eventual president of the Royal Statistical Society, to graduate from Cambridge University before 1945 was yet more uncommon, though helped by&nbsp;school scholarships.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/sep/21/dorothy-wedderburn">Continue reading...</a>SociologySocial policy and administrationImperial College LondonRoyal Holloway, University of LondonHigher educationEducationFri, 21 Sep 2012 17:44:45 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/sep/21/dorothy-wedderburnPublic DomainDorothy Wedderburn at the merger of Royal Holloway and Bedford colleges in 1986Public DomainDorothy Wedderburn at the merger of Royal Holloway and Bedford colleges in 1986Eric Hobsbawm2012-09-21T17:44:45ZEd Miliband's conference speech: the verdict of Eric Hobsbawm and othershttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/28/ed-miliband-conference-speech-verdict-2
A range of voices give their verdict on Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour conference in Manchester <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/28/ed-miliband-conference-speech-verdict-2">Continue reading...</a>Labour conference 2010Labour conferenceEd MilibandPoliticsLabourUK newsManchesterGreater ManchesterTue, 28 Sep 2010 17:15:50 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/28/ed-miliband-conference-speech-verdict-2Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesEd Miliband leaves the stage after delivering his keynote speech to Labour party members in Manchester. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesOli Scarff/Getty ImagesEd Miliband leaves the stage after delivering his keynote speech to Labour party members in Manchester. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesEric Hobsbawm, Lance Price, Tony Benn, Roy Hattersley, Shami Chakrabarti, Norman Tebbit, Lyn Gardner and Derek Simpson2010-09-28T17:15:50ZMy hero Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawmhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/12/eric-hobsbawm-hero-franz-marek
<p>Among other things, Franz Marek, Austrian communist (1913-79), born Ephraim Feuerlicht to Galician refugees, survived conventional heroism in the French wartime resistance. He headed the resistance organisation for foreigners, doing work among the occupying German forces which a survivor described as &quot;more terrifying than straightforward armed action&quot;. He was captured, sentenced to death but saved by the liberation of Paris. His &quot;last words&quot; survive, as recorded on the wall of Fresnes prison on 18 August 1944. But that is not the reason I choose him as my hero.</p><p>When I came to know this short, quizzical, laconic, formidably intelligent man who radiated a sort of self-effacing charisma even when hiking in the Vienna woods, he was still a leading member of the party he joined in 1934, though he already belonged to that lost generation of reforming &quot;Eurocommunist&quot; leaders whose last survivors are Gorbachev and the current president of Italy. After the Prague spring of 1968 he was forced out of the party and lost the only paid job he had ever had since the age of 20, that of &quot;professional revolutionary&quot;, for which he had given up academic ambition. The Comintern had given him his first new jacket and trousers, for the childhood of education-hungry Galician Jews without money did not run to such luxuries. For the next 12 years he lived on false papers.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/12/eric-hobsbawm-hero-franz-marek">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureSecond world warSat, 12 Dec 2009 00:06:33 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/12/eric-hobsbawm-hero-franz-marekEric Hobsbawm2009-12-12T00:06:33ZObituary: John Savillehttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/16/obituary-john-saville
Marxist historian renowned for his great work, the Dictionary of Labour Biography<p>John Saville, the socialist economic and social historian who has died aged 93, was an academic at Hull University for nearly 40 years, but will be remembered above all for the great, open-ended Dictionary of Labour Biography (partly co-edited with Joyce Bellamy), of which he was able to complete the first 10 volumes (1972-2000), and the three volumes of Essays in Labour History (1960, 1971, 1977) co-edited with Asa Briggs (Lord Briggs).</p><p>He was born John Stamatopoulos, in a Lincolnshire village near Gainsborough, to Edith Vessey, from a local working-class family, and Orestes Stamatopoulos, a Greek engineer who disappeared from the lives of both soon after. His mother's remarriage in London some years after the first world war to a widowed tailor, freemason and reader of the Daily Mail, to whom she had acted as housekeeper, gave her son a comfortable lower-middle-class childhood and the name he later adopted. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/16/obituary-john-saville">Continue reading...</a>HistoryBooksCultureMon, 15 Jun 2009 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/16/obituary-john-saville/globalbookProfessor John Saville has died aged 93. Photograph: globalbook/globalbookProfessor John Saville has died aged 93. Photograph: globalbookEric Hobsbawm2009-06-15T23:01:00ZEric Hobsbawm: Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives
Whatever ideological logo we adopt, the shift from free market to public action needs to be bigger than politicians grasp<p>The 20th century is well behind us, but we have not yet learned to live in the 21st, or at least to think in a way that fits it. That should not be as difficult as it seems, because the basic idea that dominated economics and politics in the last century has patently disappeared down the plughole of history. This was the way of thinking about modern industrial economies, or for that matter any economies, in terms of two mutually exclusive opposites: capitalism or socialism. </p><p>We have lived through two practical attempts to realise these in their pure form: the centrally state-planned economies of the Soviet type and the totally unrestricted and uncontrolled free-market capitalist economy. The first broke down in the 1980s, and the European communist political systems with it. The second is breaking down before our eyes in the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s. In some ways it is a greater crisis than in the 1930s, because the globalisation of the economy was not then as far advanced as it is today, and the crisis did not affect the planned economy of the Soviet Union. We don't yet know how grave and lasting the consequences of the present world crisis will be, but they certainly mark the end of the sort of free-market capitalism that captured the world and its governments in the years since Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives">Continue reading...</a>Global economyFinancial crisisEconomicsEconomic policyUS economyEuropean UnionBusinessPoliticsUK newsWorld newsThu, 09 Apr 2009 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternativesEric Hobsbawm2009-04-09T23:01:00ZObituary: Victor Kiernanhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/18/victor-kiernan-obituary
Historian with a global vision of empires, Marxism, politics and poetry<p>Victor Kiernan, who has died aged 95, was a man of unselfconscious charm and staggeringly wide range of learning. He was also one of the last survivors of the generation of British Marxist historians of the 1930s and 1940s. If this generation has been seen by the leading German scholar HU Wehler as the main factor behind &quot;the global impact of English historiography since the 1960s&quot;, it was largely due to Victor's influence. He brought to the debates of the Communist party historians' group between 1946 and 1956 a persistent, if always courteous, determination to think out problems of class culture and tradition for himself, whatever the orthodox position. He continued to remain loyal to the flexible, open-minded Marxism of the group to which he had contributed so much.</p><p>Most influential through his works on the imperialist era, he was also, almost certainly, the only historian who also translated 20th-century Urdu poets and wrote a book on the Latin poet Horace. The latter's works he, like the distinguished Polish Marxist historian Witold Kula, carried with him on his travels.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/18/victor-kiernan-obituary">Continue reading...</a>HistoryBooksCultureWed, 18 Feb 2009 00:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/18/victor-kiernan-obituaryEric Hobsbawm2009-02-18T00:01:00Z